Alvaro Germán Torres Mora Investigates Social Inequalities
Alvaro Germán Torres Mora is specializing in political economy and globalization as well as concurrently pursuing a master’s degree in statistics through the Intercollegiate Graduate Statistics and Data Science Program. His research interests are on the impacts of colonialism, land inequality, land use, and land grabs, and he is currently collecting dissertation data in Colombia on a McClure Scholarship and the Dr. Wanda Rushing Sociological Research Award.
Torres Mora earned a law degree in 2007 from the National University of Colombia. He then worked as a licensed attorney, first for the National Prosecutor’s Office, then in the Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development, where he documented cases of forced displacement and land dispossession. In 2019, he earned a master’s in development studies with minors in data science and French from the University of Helsinki in Finland. He speaks four languages. Since coming to UT, Torres Mora has published four journal articles and book chapters.
In the US, he has presented papers at the annual meetings of the American Sociological Association, the Society for the Study of Social Problems, the Southern Sociological Society and internationally he has presented in conferences in Finland, the Netherlands, and Colombia.
Torres Mora received our department’s Excellence in Research Award in 2021. He is currently teaching social inequalities and has taught introduction to sociology and social justice/social problems. He has also served as a lecturer at the Nueva Granada Military University in Colombia, where he taught international criminal law and juvenile criminal law.